After failed attempts to push climate change legislation in his first term, President Barack Obama is going around Congress to move forward his climate change goals.

Obama is using executive authority to act on one of his 2012 campaign promises: set a standard for utility companies that would make 80 percent of America's electricity clean by 2035. This week, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed ambitious new rules that could reduce carbon emissions from power plants by 30 percent, compared to 2005 levels, by 2030.

Some are calling the Clean Power Plan proposal one of the most significant steps aimed at combating global warming to come out of the White House.

The electric power sector, primarily coal plants, accounts for about 40 percent of carbon emissions and about a third of all greenhouse gas emissions. Coal plants are the largest producer of electricity in the United States – nearly 40 percent. A big change there could have a significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions and the amount of electricity produced with clean technology.

But it is difficult to predict how much these changes – assuming the current proposal becomes the final rule – will chip away at that 80-percent-by-2035 goal. Regardless, this rule could reduce the amount of coal-produced energy and encourage utility companies to adopt clean technologies, said David Konisky, a public policy professor at Georgetown University.

"The new rule will represent an important step forward on reducing these emissions," Konisky said.

Under the EPA's proposed rule, coal-fired power plants across the country would have to adopt the new carbon emission limits, and each state would decide how to make it happen it from a list of options. The options include establishing or joining a regional or state-based cap-and-trade program, or plants could adopt clean energy technologies—such as solar or wind power.

The concept behind the new rules come from Obama's Climate Action Plan, which he announced a year ago.

"Right now, there are no federal limits to the amount of carbon pollution that those plants can pump into our air. None. Zero. That's not right, that's not safe, and it needs to stop," he said in a speech at Georgetown University in 2013. "So today, for the sake of our children, and the health and safety of all Americans, I'm directing the (EPA) to put an end to the limitless dumping of carbon pollution from our power plants and complete new pollution standards for both new and existing power plants."

So how are Obama and the EPA able to put these regulations in place without Congress? Back in 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA is required to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. On the same day he gave his Georgetown speech, Obama directed the EPA to act on this rule and come up with a proposal regarding the first-ever regulations on carbon emissions at new power plants by Sep. 20, 2013 (they did) and regulations for existing power plants by June 1, 2014 (the latest proposal).

The EPA will spend the next year collecting comments on the proposal, and Obama expects them to issue a final rule by June 1, 2015.

We expect the administration will encounter plenty of opposition before the EPA issues its final rule and begins to enforce the regulations. We'll be watching to see how events play out. For now, we move this promise from Stalled to In the Works.